"Rowan (Brighton's Bad Boys)" by Tilly Delane

This interesting book is more than just another erotic novel. The quality of the writing is such that I was actually aroused (rather than amused) by the sex scenes, that I empathised with the characters even though they were impossibly attractive and multi-talented, and that, towards the end, I turned the pages as quickly as I could to find out whether they would escape their predicament.

It is told through the alternating present-tense narratives of Rowan and Raven. (In a clever move, the final section is narrated by a third party.) He is a professional fighter in a residential therapy village to seek a cure for his gambling addiction; she is his nurse. Both are instantly attracted to one another. 

Standing in the way of the instant consummation of their passion is the fact that patient-nurse relationships are banned and Raven could be dismissed and required to repay her enormous tuition fee loan. There are also other tensions within a community of alcoholics and drug addicts; there are further complications within the professionals. But, more importantly, as their relationship develops, their past histories, full of pain and regrets, have buried hugely damaging explosives in the path of true love. It is the psychological baggage that turns these characters into fully three-dimensional people; it is this that makes one identify with and root for the protagonists; it is this that makes this novel transcend its genre.

The PoV narration is also pitch perfect with the characterisations. Raven thinks like an an American girl and Rowan like a bad British boy. Even the alternating perspectives in the sex scenes seemed in character.

 The total immersion in the characters means that, towards the end, when the thriller element of the plot kicks in, things get really exciting.

This is the middle book of a trilogy. It does stand alone but I did wish I had read the first (Silas) and I would definitely like to know what happens in the third (Diego). Looks like I'll be reading them soon.

Selected quotes:

• "Getting to London from here takes half a day. Not because of distance but because the British transportation system might as well still depend on stagecoaches."
• "A repeat customer called Charlie who, nomen est omen, has a cocaine issue."
• "I want to eat her whole. And her hole."
• "This one is all woman. Not because of the tits and the arse, though both are plenty fine, especially the latter, but because of the way she holds herself. She’s confidence porn."
• "Sure thing, I’ve had men leer at me before. But he’s not leering. He’s...smoldering. I can’t really say what the difference is. The stare is the same. Maybe it’s to do with the thoughts behind the stare. He isn’t mentally undressing me then spitting me up to stick his dick in me. In his mind, I’m already buck naked and he’s doing things to me that are all about me. About what I want. Really want. Even if it’s more than I can handle."
• "My mother, not Elena but my real mother, when she was still alive, could infuse an entire house with her anger, her despair, her narcissism. Scrap that, she could project it over an entire neighborhood. So you couldn’t escape her mood even when you’d finally gotten to school five blocks away. But I think the difference is that my mom never projected anything positive or nice. That’s not to say she didn’t have her good moments. She did. But they were exactly that, moments. They never lasted long enough to dye the air happy, the way her black moods painted everything gray."
• "I’ve not heard of the author, but the way the name of the writer is printed bigger than the title and the font is frill- less, I can only assume it’s a thriller or a police procedural."
• "She slowly lifts her eyes from the page and looks over to me, disdain marring her features. I hate that she looks at me like this."
• "Do I have mummy issues? Definitely. It kind of comes with the territory of being solely responsible for your mother's death."
• "I’m not a kisser. It’s not my thing. Never has been. Saliva exchange with another person does not hold any attraction for me."
• "I like being close to people. I was close to my mum until I killed her. I was close to my half brother and sister until their father decided I was dead weight. I was close to Silas before I fucked it up."
• "the debauched men that never grow up and their dumb bitches, who think the bigger the crime the higher the status. And who wash up battered, bruised or fucked to death because they believed the trashy romance novels that told them bad guys are sexy. They’re not. They’re arseholes. Like me."
• "She was a professional. Like Raven. Not a nurse, but a teacher. Someone who society depends on."
• "the far side of the pool, which for some unfathomable reason was built to be the shallow end." (Love the oxymoron!)
• "“What colour was it?” she asks softly after a while. “Yellow,” I answer without hesitation, and feel the atoms of grief and guilt rearranging themselves inside my soul. Such an irrelevant question and yet somehow, apparently, the one I’ve been waiting for all my fucking life."
• "They call it vanishing twin syndrome. My mother calls it ‘the devil ate his sister’. In her head, my twin would have been the girl she longed for. A little dress-up doll with angelic hair and blue eyes. I got the blond hair but grey eyes and, God forbid, a penis."

Highly recommended. February 2022.

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"How UFOs Conquered the World" by David Clarke

 If the title suggests a pulp scifi story, the subtitle "The History of a Modern Myth" gives the game away. This is a comprehensive debunking of the UFO phenomena by a one-time believer who is now a sceptical investigative journalist with a PhD in folklore. He shows that 95% of UFO stories can be explained as observations of birds, Venus, and car headlights, some are outright hoaxes, and the most outlandish such as alien abductions may be explained by waking dreams and sleep paralysis. Most of the details are derived from folklore, myth or science fiction stories. The 5% that are not yet explained are not distinguishable from the 95% that already have been. UFO stories are believed by those who want to believe them and are not susceptible to scientific analysis for the simple reason that UFOlogists don't accept scientific methods such as the application of Ockham's razor. 

This is a well-written and very comprehensive book. It delves into: 

• folklore ("‘sky sailors’ were captured by angry French peasants in the ninth century, they were questioned by the Carolingian Bishop Agobard. Presumably fluent in French, they told him they came from a ‘a certain region called Magonia, out of which ships come and sail upon the clouds’"; Introduction) and fairytales (“Kidnapping and interbreeding with Homo Sapiens to produce hybrids was a common motif of the abduction syndrome but it had precedents in folklore. The fairy myths of Wales, Ireland and other countries of the Celtic fringe were replete with similar stories. In these the little folk were elusive creatures, much like the aliens, and were similarly interested in procreation. They travelled in hosts through the sky and occasionally kidnapped humans and took them to fairyland.”; Ch 8), 
• the post-war days of flying saucers with the classic 'sightings', and the Roswell incident,
• the links between ufology and new age religion and the founding of the Aetherius society
• the links between the descriptions of 'saucers' and aliens and science fiction
• the belief that governments have evidence which they are hushing up and the 'Men in Black'
• alien abduction and sleep paralysis

But in the end it concludes that believers believe because they want to believe. In ufology “the scientific method is nearly always sacrificed to wish-fulfilment.” (254) and that ufology is not qualitatively different from any other religion: “If we laugh at people who believe in cosmic masters or sinister greys ... than where should that laughter stop? Is it only antiquity and strength in numbers that insulate the major faiths of the modern world from the same joke?” (Ch 7)

Selected quotes:

• “You  can measure a circle by beginning anywhere.” (Introduction)
• “Why would aliens redesign the appearance of their craft to conform to a mistake made by a journalist?” (Ch 1)
• “The ‘weight of numbers’ argument could not be used to support the existence of UFOs when the IFOs outnumbered them by a ratio of nine to one.” (Ch 2)
• “certain special places attracted UFOs in a similar fashion to the way stately homes attracted ghosts. The idea of a small community under siege from alien forces was already a science fiction staple.” (Ch 3)
• “The more they repeated their stories the more they tended to exaggerate.” (Ch 3)
• "They talked about scientists being closed-minded. But for them, being open-minded meant being prepared to accept anything as evidence. Even if it was inconsistent, self-contradictory or demonstrably wrong.” (Ch 3)
• “Every type of UFO evidence, from complex photographs to alien abductions, secret government documents and stories told by high-ranking military officials about extreterrstrial cadavers hidden in air force hangars, has at some point been unveiled as being invented.” (Ch 4)
• “Being open-minded actually means being sceptical. ... One of the definitions of a sceptic is an inquirer who has not yet arrived at definitive conclusions.” (Ch 4)
• “Even if in a court of law eyewitness testimony is a high form of evidence, in the court of science it is the lowest form of evidence you could possibly put forth.” (Ch 5)
• “I had learnt long ago that sincerity was not a reliable guide to honesty.” (Ch 8)
• “A fundamental theme of the stories told by experiencers [of alien abductions] ... human beings in conflict with creatures that possess virtually supernatural powers ...aliens are essentially indistinguishable from the gods of old.” (Ch 9)
• “Aliens might exist therefore UFOs must be extraterrestrial craft. This is faulty logic.” (Ch 10)
• “The test of a good scientific theory: it includes specific, testable predictions ... For it to be testable it must be falsifiable ... any theory that involves supernatural forces cannot be disproved.” (Ch 10)
• “People say seeing is believing ... All the evidence suggests the opposite is the truth. In plain fact, we see what we believe.” (279)

A sympathetic debunking of the UFO myth. February 2022; 279 pages

Also on UFOs and reviewed in this blog:

• The 37th Parallel by Ben Mezrich

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God #

"The 37th Parallel" by Ben Mezrich

Most of this book tells the purportedly true story of Chuck Zukowski, a self-taught UFO investigator, as he gathers evidence, both anecdotal and physical, about UFO sightings and strange animal mutilations, which he considers to be a corollary. The human interest comes from the fact that his growing obsession with UFOs has to be tolerated by his (sceptical) wife, who ends up working two jobs so that he can work half a job and still afford the travel costs and to purchase the increasingly expensive equipment (and lab costs etc) that his researches demand. The book culminates by showing that most of the phenomena that Chuck talks about are located within 1 degree of latitude from latitude 37oN, a sort of UFO highway (or perhaps runway) that stretches more or less across the entire US.

It is written in a lively tone, following Chuck, full of lots of details about his family life, his possessions, etc, to give the whole thing massive verisimilitude. This is of huge importance; given that I was, like many other readers, hugely sceptical about the UFO side of things, it is important to establish solid grounded fact for the mundane part of the book; it makes the rest seem more real. There are some great throwaway lines:

• “for all he knew she had a cemetery full of dead people on speed dial.” (Ch 1, 2)
• “Some of the best portable equipment that overextended credit cards could buy.” (Ch 3, 15)
• “The tracker had claimed that on that night he and his girlfriend - a woman with the Hollywood ready name Trudy Truelove - ‘ were lying in the back of my pickup truck, buck naked, drinking beer and having a good ol’ time when all hell broke loose’.” (Ch 17, 123)
• “lately, even her silent stares had the feel of liquid nitrogen.” (Ch 25, 191)

The final page of the book, in which Chuck may find key evidence, is heavily redacted, with big black boxes censoring key words. It’s a brilliant way to end!

Selected quotes:

• “Supposedly, Sedona had numerous hotspots where vortices appeared, resembling electrically charged tornadoes that spiraled up and down with a [page break] spiritual energy. The Native Americans would use these specific locations to communicate with spiritual beings, and to communicate with their ancestors in the stars.” (Ch 4, 49 - 50)
• “The Apache referred to their ancestors as ‘star people’, pale, white, skinny humanoids with blue eyes who travelled in craft described as ‘birds with many colors’ that’ glowed with the sun’.” (Ch 10, 69)
• “The way the aliens had moved was always described in the exact same way: hunched forward, shuffle step, feet always touching the ground.” (Ch 14, 98)
• “Bigelow ... firmly believed that future generations would look at the current belief system as ignorant and egocentric.” (Ch 19, 147)
• “Chuck knew that the human mind was built to seek out patterns and that much smarter men than he had driven themselves crazy chasing symmetries that seemed to make sense in the dead of night, but were nothing more than shapes and shadows in the bright light of day.” (Ch 28, 233)

Lively and thought-provoking

February 2022; 247 pages

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"Numero Zero" by Umberto Eco

 A group of journalistic hacks gather together to produce a dummy newspaper whose secret purpose is to gain for their millionaire sponsor access to the inner circles of high society (basically through the power of press blackmail). One of them spins conspiracy theories linking the CIA and right wing groups to the 'murder' of pope John Paul I and the 'mystery' of Mussolini's death. The paranoid narrator fears for his life.

The themes are, I suppose, truth and fake truth, and how a newspaper can dictate the agenda and create beliefs with hints and innuendos. There is the skeleton of a thriller plot. Much of the action seemed irrelevant. There were pages of what seemed like filling (and the novel is only 190 pages), such as the couple of pages in which the journalists made silly jokes, or the two pages of autopsy report. Most of the conspiracy theories were re-peddled from other sources. 

Selected quotes:

• "Losers, like autodidacts, always know much more than winners. If you want to win, you need to know just one thing and not to waste your time on anything else ... the more a person knows, the more things have gone wrong." (Ch 1)
• "It's not the news that makes the newspaper, but the newspaper that makes the news." (Ch 5)
• "What, after all, is the pink body of an angel if not a deceptive integument that cloaks a skeleton, even if it's a celestial one?" (Ch 18)

February 2022; 190 pages

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

Eco wrote the stunning The Miracle of the Rose. He has also written Foucault's Pendulum and The Prague Cemetery. 

"Joe's Journey" by Marilyn Reilly

A very different reading experience.

Joe's Journey: In the Midst of an Inner Circle" is written is a free-flowing style that reminded me of 'stream of consciousness', although what is narrated is almost all action and dialogue, rather than the internal dialogue characteristic of this style. Most paragraphs consist of one or two sentences. The punctuation is eclectic; I got the impression that the story was dictated and subsequently, loosely, edited. 

The prose is very repetitive and concentrates on everyday activities, which is typical of normal life. Thus, the characters frequently drink tea (more often than not wine in Molly's case) with one another and chatter. 

To give you a flavour of the way the book is written, I chose the following paragraph more or less at random. Almost every paragraph is like this: "Oh yes said Brian you will love it down there it is beautiful, and the sun has come out for you too, Molly said it has been a real pleasure to meet you both, and I will get in touch with you as soon as I have any news at the station So, Molly waved goodbye as she got into the car and drove off, she made her way down to the harbour and looked around the shops and bought a few present’s for people back home then walked around the boating area to look at the big boat and yachts, then she went in for a pot of tea and a few cakes she was a sucker for cakes could not resist them."

There is very little conflict between the characters (except for the incident of the jointly-claimed lottery ticket) so the impetus for the plot comes mostly from external events, such as the death of Joe's wife. 

The early part of the story relates to Joe and the later part to Molly; the structure of the tale is that of a picaresque without any character being like a picaro. There is little connection between the two stories. 

It is a gentle ramble, describing the lives of very ordinary people. 

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"Rubbernecker" by Belinda Bauer

 An ingenious, original and page-turning crime novel.

It intertwines two stories: comatose patients recovering, or not, in a hospital ward, seen both from the point of view of one of the patients and from some of the nurses; and an anatomy student with severe Asperger's syndrome learning to dissect a human corpse. These stories intersect when the student realises that the official cause of death of the cadaver he is studying is incorrect, and he begins to suspect foul play.

The verisimilitude is amazing. I learnt so much about coma (they don't just lie there!) and recovery from coma and about human anatomy. The character with Asperger's was treated with honesty and empathy and some humour. Other characters were also beautifully depicted, including the lazy, husband-hunting nurse and a devastatingly sad portrait of the Asperger's student's mother. 

The second half of the book, as the mystery deepens and the hunt for the killer turns into a fight for survival, is nail-bitingly exciting.

Selected quotes:

• "Even though he never asked, she would tell him about the garden and the cat. It always went on for a lot longer than either of them deserved." (Ch 10)
• "Months of lying prone without the benefit of circulation had left the body flattened on the bottom like a bag of sand. Now inverted, the buttocks remained oddly two-dimensional." (Ch 15)
• "Tracey Evans is an idiot. God knows how she passed her nursing exams, but she has the literacy skills and attention span of a toddler on Tartrazine. How can she mistake 'wife' for 'wofe'? What's a wofe when it's at home." (Ch 18)
• "Tapping my chest in that creepy way that doctors do - as if they're trying to find a secret passage in a smuggler's wall." (Ch 25)
• "If you can't trust a mirror, what can you believe?" (Ch 25)
• "He'd been more of an anti-careers master, really, selling them the spaces between work." (Ch 48)

A wonderful read.

February 2020; 313 pages

Also by Belinda Bauer and reviewed in this blog:

• Snap

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"Summer Lightning" by P G Wodehouse

 The third book in the Blandings Castle series (following Something Fresh and Leave it to Psmith)and one senses that PGW is really getting into his stride. The old favourites are back: The vague but affable Earl of Emsworth, his sister Constance, his erstwhile secretary the Efficient Baxter, the butler, Beech, and two sets of young lovers whose hopes and thwarted dreams provide the motivation for abduction of the Empress of Blandings, a potentially prize-winning pig. Add to the mix that Emsworth's brother Galahad has decided to write his memoirs, which seem likely to libel half the aristocracy, and the inevitable imposter and the stage is set for another classic Wodehouse farce. 

As usual the playful prose delights.

Selected quotes:

• "It was that gracious hour of a summer afternoon, midway between luncheon and tea, when Nature seems to unbutton its waistcoat and put its feet up." (1.1)
• "the bullfinch ... continued to chirp reflectively to itself, like a man trying to remember a tune in his bath" (3.4)
• "In moments of stress, the foolish question is always the one that comes uppermost in the mind." (6.1)
• "The only man who was ever thrown out of the Cafe de l'Europe for trying to raise the price of a bottle of champagne by raffling his trousers at the main bar." (7.2)
• "Every day you seem to know less and less about more and more." (8.1)
• "He was oppressed by a feeling that he had gone considerably farther than was prudent. Samson, as he heard the pillars of the temple begin to crack, must have felt the same. Gestures are all very well while the intoxication lasts. The trouble is that it lasts such a very little while." (13.1)
• "It was not that he had any objection to Millicent as a wife. He had none whatsoever - provided she were somebody else's wife." (13.1)

The usual joy to read.

Other books by P G Wodehouse reviewed in this blog can be found here.

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"Road Kill - The Duchess of Frisian Tun" by Pete Adams

This is the most experimental novel I have read for some time.

Frisian Tun is a posh street in Portsmouth, whose middle-class standards are maintained by the self-styled Duchess and a set of unwritten rules. Much of it is destroyed after a shoot-out involving tanks and rocket launchers. The action of the novel consists of an unlikely group of residents gathering together with a cub reporter (who loses his virginity) to discuss what happened in the street.

But that is like trying to describe the 'plot' of a Monty Python sketch mixed with seaside postcard humour.

It was also very funny in its repeated use of word-play. It was like one of those stand-up comedians who specialises in puns. No opportunity was missed to poke fun at the language used, to the extent that I couldn't tell if some words had simply been misprinted or or they had been deliberately mis-spelt (for example, the repeated use of the word ‘reined’ for ‘reigned’). Here are just a few examples:

• "It was in fact, a 2CV, which is twice as good as a CV."
• "It was a master class in denial, the core faith of his C of E (Church of Egypt) faith, De Nile."
• "a steamy, phonographic sex scene; just for the record." (Ch 18)

I was left scrabbling to try and find something else I had read that came anywhere close. It seemed to be a hybrid of the following:

• The Unlimited Dream Company by J G Ballard in which the respectable suburb of Shepperton erupts into an orgiastic fantasy
• Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne for the endless discursiveness and the repeated intrusion of the author.
• The anarchy of The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman by Angela Carter
• or the anarchy of a William Burroughs novel, such as Naked Lunch

Perhaps I should be looking further afield. The author tells me that he has been considered a literary version of Salvador Dali and it is hard to disagree on the evidence of this book. It left me wondering why the novel form is so unexperimental, compared to paintings, or films.

Was it enjoyable? It wasn't difficult to read and there were some very funny moments. The bizarre characters are well-drawn. But most of all it was liberating. It blew away the literary cobwebs and showed the possibilities of a novel, once you have dispensed with convention.

Selected quotes:

• "Jack thought for a while, which involved stopping as he was not a famed multitasker."
• "The passion had the potential to become frenzied, except Amanda had to help him with her buttons and finally her bra strap."
• "All that remained as evidence of the Duchess’s stately pile was a particularly un-stately pile of rubble, the shells of walls sticking up like empty teeth where fillings had long ago departed, the plumbing and cabling exposed as if dead nerves of a deceased body and a first floor bath tub, stubbornly reigned high and mighty, like a large nasal protuberance on a formerly proud face." (Ch 1)
• "his mother did not allow him to have a mobile phone for risk of brain tumours, always assuming there was sufficient brain residing in the Pimple skull for a tumour to attach itself" (Ch 5)
• "Amanda Austin, the mature cheese to Jack’s dry, powdery chalk" (Ch 10)

I am awarding it five stars because I think it achieved completely what I imagine the author set out to do.

February 2022

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"The Haunting of Alma Fielding" by Kate Summerscale

 Alma Fielding was a Croydon woman whose house was 'haunted' by a poltergeist in the 1930s. She became a subject of intense scrutiny by psychic researchers led by Nandor Fodor. This book is an account of those investigations.

It is well written but it is little more than a blow-by-blow account of the case and, to be honest, I quickly became tired of the reports of yet another seance. I felt the book could have done with more summary. But then it wouldn't have been long enough for a book. Perhaps the problem was that I was sceptical from the start, quickly deciding that the 'supernatural' occurrences were instances of fraud, and impatient of the credulous researchers.

It was interesting that the interest in spiritualism and 'psychic' phenomena peaked after so many people had been bereaved by the First World War, especially as the threat of a second war became imminent. It was sad that so many of the so-called psychic phenomena were so trivial: the manifestation of white mice and old coins like cheap conjuring tricks. It was bizarre that so many mediums professed to spirit guides that were Native Americans (and if not, from other exotic nationalities). 

Selected quotes:

• "A peculiar, six-digit handprint on the mirror." (Ch 1)
• "The golden age of psychical study was also the heyday of supernatural hustle." (Ch 4)
• "The 'futurity racket' ... was typical of societies on the brink of chaos and destruction: the Italian magician Count Cagliostro flourished in Paris before the revolution of 1789, much as the faith healer Rasputin thrived in St Petersburg before 1917 ... since publication of the first newspaper horoscope in 1930, astrology had become a national craze." (Ch 6)
• "At twenty-three she had contracted anthrax poisoning from a Woolworth's toothbrush that scratched her gum." (Ch 7)
•  "Psychics were natural transgressors, crossing all kinds of boundaries, from waking to trance, from the earthly to the spirit world. Their weaknesses - moral, physical, emotional - were the fissures through which the phantoms came." (Ch 7)
• "The weather was mild and the international situation stable. 'No bad news - official!' announced the Pictorial." (Ch 11)
• "Solid edges seemed to melt, objects to quiver and press. The sitters flinched at the metamorphoses, the breaching of boundaries, the spillages." (Ch 12)
• "One day in about 1900, when she was seven, her Aunt Martha beat her in punishment for 'lying' about the invisible friends with whom she played. Eileen was angry. Afterwards she sat watching her aunt's ducklings paddling on the farm lake. She leant forward from the lake's edge and seized a baby duck, pushed it under the water, held it there until its wings stopped heaving against her hands. ... Then she grabbed another duckling ..." (Ch 13)
• "Her mother had drowned herself in a well in 1893, when Eileen was two weeks old, and her father had shot himself six weeks later." (Ch 13)
• "Many of her actions in this phase were deliberate ... but some so impulsive as to slip the leash of choice or intention." (Ch 17)
• "From Bram Stoker's novel onwards, the characterisation of Dracula as a ruthless rapacious parasite drew directly on anti-Semitic tropes." (Ch 18)
• "The investigation, like an abusive relationship, had moved from enticement to coercion, from flattery to threat." (Ch 18)
• "Justice Singleton questioned whether Fodor had much reputation to lose ... the jury should remember that it was dealing with a man who had gone to the Isle of Man to meet a talking mongoose." (Ch 19)
• "She had enacted a wild, months-long magic-realist extravaganza at the International Institute for Psychical Research, a piece of performance art in which she was both the Lady-sawn-in-half and the magician who cuts a slice through her." (Ch 19)
• "In 1941, the navy launched an inquiry into the Scottish medium Helen Duncan ... after reports that she had psychically intercepted a state secret about the sinking of a warship. The investigation uncovered deceit rather than ethereal espionage, and in 1944 Duncan became one of the last people to be convicted of fraud under the Witchcraft Act." (Ch 20)
• "Many mediums were bereaved mothers, and ... the convulsions of trance could resemble a woman's labour throes." (Ch 20)

February 2022; 314 pages

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

Kate Summerscale also wrote The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, which also seemed too long for the material it contained but became a massive best-seller.

"Dune" by Frank Herbert

 The classic scifi story about the battle for a desert planet. A galactic empire is riven by faction fighting between aristocratic houses. An order of witches controls an aristocratic breeding programme. A young man on a desert planet is taught mind control tricks. This epic story is clearly the influence for Star Wars but, as the biggest-selling scifi novel of all time, it is so much more.

Its major themes include environmentalism, psychedelic drug use, eugenics and religion. There are clear references to the emergence and rapid expansion of Islam from its desert setting. Although religion is fundamental to the motives of the characters, and they experience drug-induced altered states of consciousness which include the ability to see the future, Dune is resolutely secular: there are prophets but no Gods.

Told from a multiple PoV, the plot is a characteristic hero's adventure; in the very earliest pages the hero is tested by and receives advice from a crone. Much of the interest of the book comes from the world-making which is incredible. Each 'chapter' begins with a quote from the works of Princess Irulan.

Selected quotes:

• "Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them." 
• "A world is supported by four things ... the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the righteous and the valour of the brave." 
• "She went through the quick regimen of calmness - the two deep breaths, the ritual thought." 
• "Growth is limited by that necessity which is present in the least amount." 
• "Is it defeatist or treacherous for a doctor to diagnose a disease correctly?"
• "She stared at him, thinking of the Duke's men rubbing their woes together in the barracks until you could almost smell the charge there, like burnt insulation."
• "The day hums sweetly when you have enough bees working for you."
• "As his planet killed him, it occurred to Kynes ... that the most persistent principles of the universe were accident and error."
• "She had succumbed to that profound drive shared by all creatures who are faced with death - the drive to seek immortality through progeny." 
• "When religion and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movement becomes headlong - faster and faster and faster. They put aside all thoughts of obstacles and forget that a precipice does not show itself to the man in a blind rush until it's too late."
• "Give as few orders as possible ... Once you've given orders on a subject, you must always give orders on that subject."

A hugely influential epic.

February 2022; 485 pages

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God